Experiments in innovation support

Dr. Eszter Czibor is an applied microeconomist based in Reykjavík, interested in entrepreneurship, innovation and the future of work. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Amsterdam and worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago. This talk is based on several projects Eszter led/participated in as Principal Researcher for Nesta's Innovation Growth Lab between 2019 and 2021.

With the growing popularity of evidence-based policy making, innovation agencies worldwide have become increasingly interested in rigorous experimentation. In this talk she will discuss various ways in which experiments may be embedded in the design, delivery and evaluation of innovation funding and business support schemes. She will highlight two examples of using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in this space. First she will describe experiments conducted in collaboration with Nesta Challenges, a UK-based challenge prize center, aimed at reducing bias in their assessment process. Second, she will share learnings from an ongoing EU Horizon 2020 programme whose goal is to incentivize innovation agencies to use RCTs for impact measurement.

Zoom link